


Youth of the Nation

by poisontaster



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:05:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>When Aaron was a junior agent just starting out in the BAU, he used to see his face everywhere.</em> Mild spoilers for 3.01, "Doubt".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Youth of the Nation

When Aaron was a junior agent just starting out in the BAU, he used to see his face everywhere.

Abusing children is nothing new, though the very jaded bitterness of that thought makes his stomach churn just to think it. Modern society likes to think it's come so far from its uncivilized roots, but sometimes civility is just a shallow veneer.

_You want to act like an animl? Fine, I'll treat you like an animal. Feed you scraps off the floor like a little dog. Come on, Aaron, bark for me! Bark for your old man!_

He looks at bruised and battered faces and his own aches in memories. He can pick out the noses that didn't heal quite straight ever again, notched or bumped or pushed to one side. Eyes that are two different shapes, because the orbital bone's been shattered into sand and there's not enough hardness left to underpin the flesh the way it used to. Teeth missing or, if they're _lucky (you don't know how lucky you are, Aaron, to have a father like me)_ , replaced with caps and bridges or whole dental sets.

He remembers this. He remembers it all, no matter how much he tries to put it behind him. On damp days, his elbow aches. If he's had to fire his gun, sometimes it throbs deep in his collarbone, an ache he can't ever quite massage away.

_You want something to cry about? I'll **give** you something to cry about!_

Though Aaron works his way up the ladder faster, he never stops thinking of Jason as his mentor, as well as his friend. Aaron thinks it's telling, the way he expected their relationship to wither and sour when he was in the director's chair, not Jason. The sourness is all his own, a flinch in expectation of a phantom blow that never comes. Their relationship is built on other things than that.

It's Jason that begins his transformation; Aaron already knows a great deal. He's got talent and he's no rookie, but there's an instinctive fineness to the way that Jason handles cases. It's not hard work for Jason; he dips into the human mind as easily as Aaron would dip his fingers in a bowl of water. (Aaron won't realize until too late the outcome of that analogy, the way water clings and soaks into the skin, transmuting what it touches; by that time, Jason will be gone.)

When Aaron looks at the children, he no longer sees his own face. He doesn't keep a book, but they're there, etched indelibly into his every brain cell.

They are not him, these children.

They are April and Katy and Kwan and Jimmy and Sandra and Jennifer and Douglas…


End file.
